Brian Eno’s Diary

Spent the weekend on Dangar Island with no phone. It rained. Hence I managed to re-read A Year with Swollen Appendices: Brain Eno’s Diary, which I must have last read in about 1998. There is some truly wonderful stuff in this book.

For example, the question “What the **** am I here for?…. is a very modern question, only available at a certain level of luxury and self-importance.”

Other gems include the following:

8 January
“Spending lots of money is often an admission of lack of research, preparation and imagination”

24 February
“Young boy riding at high speed on a bicycle shouting repeatedly, “I am here”. Perhaps the central and single message of humanity”. (Twitter anyone?).

23 March
“The more ‘richly connected’ we make our world the more vulnerable we make it. Empowerment cuts both ways: as the complexity of things increases, so does the ability of an increasingly minute number of people to destabilize it.”

12 June
“Luck is being ready”

I also appreciated the idea of cosmetic psychiatry (made me think of cosmetic brain surgery in the future) and cities having ‘idea districts’.

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